loveandprozak

Chaos Theory 3: DCCCI (801?) Overall note impressions: Red musk, amber (multiple types -- dark, honeyed, and powdery), vanilla bean, patchouli, dark musk, sasparilla, other resins and spices? In the bottle: Almost a pure Red Musk single note. Sweet and strong; if you've smelled Smut, you know the note -- it's the same musk. Wet (applied): An initial strong waft of vanilla bean hits my nose upon skin contact. The red musk is still very apparent, but now there is a dark, sweet vanilla liqour counteracting it. 5 - 20 minutes on skin: We have a morpher on our hands. The gauzy red musk has parted to reveal a scent remniscent of Snake Charmer. With the musk and candied vanilla beans still backing the scent up, though, this seems less of the Snake Charmer, and more of an exotic, copper-skinned snake-woman/Naga (circa Laurell K. Hamilton, perhaps?) full of slinky, sexual intent. Honeyed, slightly powdery amber is at the forefront. 20 minutes - 1 hourish: From the clouds of sweetness the distinctly feral scent of black musk has surfaced. It's slight and subtle, far from choking like most of Beth's scents that incorporate a dark musk. This is menace contained -- the still seductive naga smiling, the faintest drop of blood visible on a fang, her belly full of the Snake Charmer's blood who wished to contain her, his body safely tucked away. 1hourish+: The dark musk evidence slowly fades from view, and instead there's the red musk/vanilla bean/powdery amber/snake charmer combination. She's soft, seductive, and well-fed now. The body has long been safely disposed of, and there's nothing better to do on the lazy summer afternoon but sprawl out amidest the honeyed indian spices. Final thoughts: I love fragrances like this that bring creativity and visualization so easily to the forefront. I"ve never been much of a Chaos Theory person, as most of the bottles I've had have always struck me as "nice, but lacking the softening process of blending and reblending that makes a fragrance really come alive, artistically speaking". This is my first real exception to that, I think. While I have, admittedly, never been one for the scent of Snake Oil, Snake Charmer, Smut, etc. on my own skin because it just doesnt' work well with my personality, my hats are off to the beautiful blending of those, and now to this Chaos Theory as well. Quite a lovely winner. Related Fragrances: Snake Charmer, Smut, Golden Priapus, Snake Oil Previously reviewed by neuilly.

If you were willing to look at something non-BPAL, there's several options. I don't know if you're married to the idea that it has to be a BPAL oil or not. I'd say your best option based on your wants, in my opinion is Oriental Lumpur by Les Nereides. You can purchase it at a few places on the web. One place I consider that is reputable that has it is: http://www.luckyscent.com/shop/detail.asp?...04&section= A couple others that sound like they MAY plese you is Padparadascha by Satellite and Dinner by Bobo. Really, the Oriental Lumpur seems spot on, though. You can get samples of it most places as well.

I've found that Herve Leger and Fae smell almost identical!!

I'd have to say that Morocco is my favorite carnation. It rally highlights the spicy/exotic elements of the flower well with the combined notes.

I find that Lick It smells like a Peppermint scented oil + Black Opal on me.

I actually find "clean and spicy" an excellent description of the oil "Black Phoenix".

I would think that if BPALs were 100% EOs with no carriar oil, a) they would be far, FAR stronger and Beth would have put a nice obvious "Caution" on the faqs page, about applying EOs to bare skin undiluted, yada yada I was just in Barneys and the lady at the L'Artisan counter was saying how the scent of Mimosa in one of their perfumes is recreated through "bouquets" (instead of using a synthetic) so I guess it can be done! I doubted! Then again, it does seem like doing something akin to mixing together orange, blue, and pink to make...urm...beige? *knows nothing about blending bouquets, obviously * I have to agree. First off, as several people have pointed out, the least you really need to worry about if you actually apply a highly concentrated essential oil to your skin is whether you get a red mark on it. There can be some SERIOUS side-effects. Secondly, there'd have to be all sorts of cautionary notes to avoid a law suit. There's way too many adverse effects to applying undiluted oil to your skin -- cinnamon, wintergreen, citrus, and vanilla being just a few that are big no-no's. There's also just the truth that almost any undiluted blend would smell really strong and vile if you applied it to your skin. Some of the "prettiest" smelling oils like vanilla and carnation are just awful if you smell them undiluted. Several notes also just don't exist in essential oil form that are listed. Gardenia seems to be the classic example people cite where it doesn't have a true essential oil, but it is created through the use of bouqets. Another good example would be some of the poppy blends, since it is illegal to even have poppies (with the exception of the loosely related California Poppy,) in the United States, let alone try to make an oil out of one. People have also mentioned price -- some of the oils Beth uses like agarwood, narcissus, and osmanthus are incredibly high in cost, and there's no way they could be used in a blend at $12.50 a bottle unless they were very strongly diluted. All that being said, there is a round-about caveat to all this. You have to consider how strong the essential oil being blended is in the first place. While the oil bought in stores is created in a rather complicated, elaborate, and mechanized process, people have been known to create their own oils. This is simply a process of taking an oil, like coconut oil, and daily adding components to it (like orange peel) until it begins to take on the scent of your desired component. (If you're interested in this process in full, it should be easy to find using google, I've done it before!) It is, ofcourse, much weaker than a store bought oil. If you mixed oils with a base of one of these "home-made" essentials and simply added other, stronger essential oils to it, you would, technically, be using "undiluted" essential oils. In practice, though, your oil would still have a very high carrier oil content, making it safe to use on the skin. PS: A lot of bouqets are simply stand-ins with a note or two to help round them out. For instance, as with the mimosa oil described above, while there really IS such a thing as mimosa essential oil it's VERY grainy and difficult to blend with so perfumers will often reach for an easier-to-blend similarly-scentedoil like cassie or orris root. Then, since Mimosa is sweeter than either of those, the perfumer uses some surrounding notes to sweeten it up.

Block Buster and Harvest Moon '05 remind me of each other. But keep in mind that Harvest Moon '04 and '05 have significant differences. I can second this. Block Buster is Harvest Moon 05's brighter, sunnier relation.

Hmmm... this one didn't smell at all like I imagined, conceptually or note-wise. I had expected something that was sweet and somewhat chaotic smelling given the notes and my general conception of Devil's Night. Instead, this is a much drier, mysterious, and subdued blend. I smell woods in this. Dry, barren woods that are not anything like the rich forests I generally smell in BPAL scents, such as Oberlin and Ice Queen. I'd normally be turned off by this amount of dryness, but there's a thick layer of bay rum on top of it that keeps me intrigued. Far from chaotic or playful, this scent is more remniscent of me of a final credits scene in a campy slasher flick where all the campers are missing, the fires from the previous night have burnt out, and the sun hesitantly sets on the all-too-still scene of half-drunk bottles of booze, empty tents, and abandoned camping gear. It's very evocative, and something that I'll probably keep around for the "right mood" even though it's not my normal tastes.

I was very pleased to find that Lady Macbeth and Midwinter's Eve were very similar. It smells pretty much like the same thing, but Lady Macbeth lacks Midwinter's Eve "cold" note. Possibly if you layered it with Szepassony even that would be taken care of...

Wet: Heady and citrusy. Definiely a 'rain forest' feel here. 5 - 20 minutes: There's not much change. The citrus has faded somewhat, and blended to create a really heavyy, wet, lush scent that seems to be a mix of citrus, floral, and woods. The notes are fairly indistinguishable, though. 20 minutes - drydown: Hmm.. this has suddenly become a nicer version of Manila. I smell the same tropical banana-like note in this as I do in Manila, but the the woods aren't so dry in this. This is a vibrant, bright, tropical feeling Manila. I actually really like Machu Picchu. It isn't going to be replacing any of my top ten, and I don't feel the need to run out and buy a huge bottle, but I can see sometime in the future a 5ml ending up in my BPAL cart.

Hmm... I seem to get slightly different things in this than the listed notes. Wet: Cherry. A dark black cherry with some sweet warmth behind it. 1 minute - 10 minutes: Heliotrope. Lots of powdery sweet vanilla-like heliotrope dominating the scent. The cherry scent is still here, but it's now definitely playing "second fiddle" to the heliotrope. 10 minutes - 1 hour: Clove begins to peak through. It never dominates or overpowers the blend, but instead remains in the background, kind of spicing up the cherry. I might smell a little bit of leather mixed in with the clove. Still predominantly cherry. 1 hour - drydown: This scent becomes quite faint and cherry-like at this stage. It's sweet and pleasant. I find F54 to be a very nice fragrance, and if it was available I'd probably get a bottle. That being said, there are quite a few BPALs I like better, so I really would not be moved to pay the tremendous amounts of money people do to get a full bottle of this. I'll probably give another swipe with the imp and then pass it on, without regret, to a friend.

This one started out lovely on me -- lots of orange blossom, but ended up being a complete patchouli-fest, which is one note I really don't usually agree with. I can't really give a longer/better review than this because I ended up having to wash it off.

And more wearable, at least for me . Snake Oil is HORRID on me, but Snake Charmer is fab. I'm so pleased! (Not too strong or spicy on me either. Just sexy. Yum.) I actually find Golden Priapus to smell a lot more like Snake Charmer than Snake oil does.

Love in the Asylum, a recent limited edition (meaning it shouldn't be TOO painful to find,) was a nice rose-tobacco-incense scent. While I haven't smelled it, I also have heard someone say Dracul had a nice tobacco note in it. Non-BPAL, Geparlys' Darkness comes to mind. It's little-known but much loved by many who do know it (in my experience). It is a somewhat sweet, but rather masculine tobacco/tonka blend. (I figure since it's for a car masculine edge doesn't matter!) It's a bit hard to find anywhere but on E-Bay, but you usually can get it fairly cheap there.

Ohh, this is wonderful. I smell cinnamon, copal resin, and lemon. To me, this is Chimera's fair-haired and light-hearted sister. It's very true to it's name in the sense that it is both bright and sunny smelling. I'm /so glad/ I tried this /after/ I heard Beth was bringing back the celestials. I might have gone crazy insane otherwise.

I have to go with the masses on this and say that this smells like violet soap. It starts out a sharp violet soap on me, and ends up having a hint of sweetness as it dries down. It lasts quite awhile on me -- I put some on this morning and can still smell it, albeit faintly, on my wrists now that it is evening. Hmm.. I'm not sure what to think of this. On one hand, I absolutely *love* the 'snow'/'cold' note of Beth's most prominently seen in Ice Queen and Cold Moon. To the point that it is likel my bumber one favorite of her conceptual bouqets. This, unfortunately, doesn't have that despite the description, and it makes me a little wary of reformulations in the Winter limited editions. Cold Moon won't be available anyway, alas, but Ice Queen will definitely lose some magic if one of the components of the 'snow' note isn't attainable, and the note in Numb is used instead. It's just too harsh and in your face to be a conceptual snowstorm. All that said, if I stop thinking of this as a Winter fragrance, and instead as a "clean" violet fragrance it definitely stands up on its own. I can see it being very useful if you're looking for a soapy just-showered sort of smell, which can be both a nice inoffensive scent while still being moderately sexy. It definitely lacks the 'wintery' feel of two of my all time favorite BPALs, though (Ice Queen and Cold Moon.) I just can't see (smell?) the chill factor in it. Here's hoping that the lack of grapefruit oil (it seems the most likely culprit if it is not unattainable,) hasn't signaled the end of Beth's winter note.

First, I have to give the lab lots of love. They surprised me with a 5ml of this as a thank you to a matter that I brought to their attention. So a great big from me to all of them. This started off soapy on me. I think it's the same note that I observed in Numb. Unlike Numb, however, the soapiness quickly got shoved to the background on me, and in its place is a very... purple scent. I'm wanting to say violet, orchid, or wisteria (I wouldn't have thought about this one if not for a previous review, I can definitely see it, though..) but maybe some combination of the three. It's a nice juicy warm smell. I really don't smell lavendar in this, though aroma-thereapically speaking it makes sense with a name like Peace. FYI: This came to me in a Twilight Alchemy Lab bottle, so I'm assuming that it just was and/or will be released as such.

Wet: White Musk, vanilla, and an aquatic note. I can't quite figure out what the aquatic note is, though... I know I've smelled it before somewhere. I'll have to work it out in my mind and see if I can place it. 10 minutes: Not too much of a change. This is a soft, mysterious sort of scent. I wouldn't go so far as to say exotic, but there's definitely a hint of the unusual in here thanks to the aquatic (very very slightly green) note. 40 minutes - Drydown: My skin chemistry starts to amp up the vanilla, and suddenly this smells just like a vanilla milkshake plus musk. I actually rather enjoy it. Verry nice. ETA: Teakwood!! I KNEW if I just stopped thinking about this so hard I'd figure out what the sublime note that mixes with the vanilla and white musk was. Teak!!!!

I find Hunger satiates my chocolate-orange love, actually. That said, I have smelled it on someone else and it didn't smell /near/ as good, so it might be a pretty body-chemistry dependent oil. I suppose if I was going to do a BPAL chocolate orange scent I'd get a chocolate scent like Bliss and mix it with mandarine essential oil. I tend to find that mandarine is really the most lovely to mix with sweet scents, but unfortunately I don't think there's a primary-mandarine scent in the BPAL catalog. You can pick it up as an essential fairly cheap, though.

Hmm.. this is a very sweet soft scent. I've tried several white and transparent musks, and this certainly is a lovely one. It's got a very definite sweet-vanilla character to it. There's some dark undertones, however -- honestly, I haven't smelled Black Opal, but this is very close to what I imagine it smelling like based on the reviews! (I could be 100 percent off, though.) This really isn't the transparent musk that is in Buck Moon or Haunted. It's got a much darker vanilla quality to it. The closest thing that I can compare it to, off hand is Dream Esscents' White Musk since both have a vanilla note. While Dream Esscents has a light aquatic-vanilla quality to it, though, BPALs stays with a sweeter, darker and dusky vanilla. I also detect a suede note in BPALs, which aids in the dark feel of it. Transparent musk, vanilla, and suede.

(This is a review of 2004's Samhain) Wet: Patchouli and dusky honey. Yes, yes, I know there's not supposed to be any honey in here, but that's what it smells like. It must be a combination of the sweet fruits and spices, combined with my skin's tendency to amp up the sweetness in almost anything. It's a warm, dusky smell. 10 minutes: Wow. This does a terrific job of what I'd want and expect Samhain to smell like. The scent really seems to be working on two different levels here. On the top level I smell warmth; clove, pumpkin, and other spice. They aren't in my face at all, though. Instead it's a delicate blend that, when mixed, has more of a hearthy-warmth sort of feel more than anything. The second level is dominated by patchouli, but there's something else here that is allowing it to smell very.. dark. Not heavy at all, really, but just /dark/. I /adore/ this stage. 30 minutes: The dark layer slowly fades and blends into a lovely spice scent. It's got hints of sweetness propping it up and making the patchouli pleasant as opposed to hippie-shop. This is a warm smell, but exotic, and it has a an edge of allure and danger to it. Hour - drydown: Not much change here, but the lasting power is fantastic. It stays for hours and hours and hours and hours on end, and yet isn't ever overly harsh or musky, like most scents that can do such. Wow. I really like this. I think it's going to go into my top ten, which just shocks me. I never have tried it before because a) Up until now, there's yet to be a BPAL patchouli blend that I liked, and Recently I have heard it compared to Hexennaucht, which is a scent that I really didn't like on my skin at all. Samhain is fantastic on me, though. I think my real love of the scent is that somehow, even though it's not pumpkin-centric at all, there's a certain evocation of Halloween and a Jack-o-Lantern with it. The layers of spicy, sweet warmth and earthy darkness evoke, in my mind, the image of a candle flickering in a carved pumpkin on a Halloween night. Definitely something I'll make to acquire bottles of and keep around when I'm in the mood to be a bit tragically hip.

Wet: Pine. It smells like a less in-your face version of Skadi at this point. Hmmm. 10 - 45 minutes: Oh my. I'm already figuring out what this is, and because it's a long-past limited edition I oh-so-know I'm in trouble. This is Ice Queen, but rather then the scent of forests slowly fading into a Titania-like icy fruit snowstorm, the scent unfolds more and more into gentle florals and the lunar bouquet. Beth's winter blends have always held my favorite place in the BPAL pantheon, and this might well be one of my favorites. The sweet florals have a wonderful, crisp virginal snow effect. 45 minutes - drydown: The fragrance becomes quite delicate at this stage. I no longer smell the pine at all, but instead simply sweet, subtle flowers and snow. This is evocative so much of walking slowly through a gentle night snowfall for me, one of my favorite things in the world. I loooove this. I must have more. More, more, more! While Ice Queen is the evocation of a blizzard this is... this is the soft gentle snow of winter where you can still walk around and be absorbed in peace. The Silent Night to Ice Queen's biting frost. *faint* ETA Still in mad, passionate love with this stuff. I felt I should add, though, I don't know why I didn't notice this before (as it now is painfully obvious) but this is lotus! It's the most gorgeous lotus perfume I've ever smelled. It's not BPAL's typical bubblegummy lotus note a la Neptune and Shattered, but a sophisticated, soft lotus. I think this might be because it's mixed with iris; that's my best guess.

Wet: This is a HOT scent. The vaguely peppery-but-not-pepper note that is present in most of the Voodoo oils mixed with a dark, dry, spicy clove. 5 minutes: This is lovely. My skin has amplified the sweetness of the clove. In this stage this is very remniscent of Three Witches to me. French Creole has a bit of a darker twist thanks to the Voodoo base, however. 30 minutes: Not very much change. Spicy, sweet, and slightly dark. 1 hour - Full Dry Down - Wow, this is interesting. Suddenly a floral appeared -- maybe that's what was lending a sweetness to the clove? I'm guessing rose or *possibly* lotus. It's a sweet pink note that dispels the darker voodoo notes. The spice still is there, but now it's more candy-like a la Old Sybaris thanks to the floral sweetness.

That's exactly what I got from Amsterdam, actually. It's light, airy, aquatic, grassy, with a few tinges of floral.